Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will decide whether this party will have a free vote on that amendment and he will do that when it is appropriate to do so.

In response to the question put by the hon. member, first, the reality is that for a party such as hers which is so interested in taking head counts in polls before deciding how its members will vote, the party opposite should know that as recently as this weekend the Liberal Party of Canada had no difficulty in deciding where it stands on the issue by overwhelmingly voting in favour of the amendment we proposed. Second, an Angus Reid poll which polled the views of Canadians across the country announced that the vast majority of Canadians are behind this amendment.

If that is not good enough for the Reform Party, there is something wrong with it.

At the meeting of the Quebec branch of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister waxed eloquent about the integrity of his government. And yet, in the Somalia affair, there are growing signs that information was falsified and concealed. Even the chief of defence staff, General Boyle, who was personally chosen by the minister of defence, appears to be very seriously implicated in this affair.

Does the Deputy Prime Minister realize that the credibility of her government is compromised by the systematic refusal of her defence minister to suspend General Jean Boyle until the inquiry is over?

has been asked a number of times in recent days and I am compelled to give the same answer.

We have a process in motion. A commission of inquiry is looking into all aspects of the Canadian force deployment to Somalia. Some other issues that are perhaps tangential but which may deal with the documentation issue with respect to Somalia have been raised. The commission has started hearings and those hearings are ongoing.

All people concerned will have the opportunity to give their side of events and their points of view over the next couple of weeks. I would ask the hon. member the basic courtesy to allow all those people to come forward and let the decision be made by the commission in due course.

Mr. Speaker, I am quite prepared to observe the basic courtesies, but normally, when someone is the subject of an inquiry, he is temporarily suspended, precisely in order to get to the bottom of the events at issue. It is a question of credibility.

Since General Boyle was directly implicated by certain witnesses, why is the minister of defence making an exception to this sacrosanct rule by refusing to suspend the general until the inquiry is over?

Mr. Speaker, I would submit that those lacking credibility are the members of the opposition who will not allow the normal Canadian judicial process to take its normal course and allow people every right to give their side of events in an impartial setting.

It is not we who are out of step, it is the opposition that is out of step with the ideas and values of Canadians.

We will be here a long time if we wait until the hon. member finds the right way to ask the question.

The answer of course, is that when there are resolutions, as there are today involving victims' rights, members of this party vote as they see fit. I already told the House this morning that I am going to be voting in favour of the resolution because I share the objectives expressed by the hon. member. I expect that other members of the government side will vote as they see fit.

We are doing that because the resolution before the House today raises issues in which we share the objectives of all members of the House, that victims be treated properly and with dignity throughout the criminal justice system.

Mr. Speaker, the pharmaceutical industry is the main sector of biomedical research in Canada, accounting for more than $561 million in R and D investments in 1994. It is, moreover, one of the few healthy sectors of the Montreal economy. According to a number of sources, however, the government appears to be preparing to modify the link regulations under Bill C-91.

Will the Minister of Industry confirm that his government is preparing to modify regulations relating to Bill C-91 on the pharmaceutical industry in such as way as to greatly reduce the protection of drug patents?